I Have a Crush (and Wish I Didn't)

Gross. I now have a crush on my admirer. I hate having crushes. It is SO un-Singlutionary. Having a crush, for me at least, is also a feeling of longing . . . of not being present in the moment but longing for some future junction when crush-plus-I can ride off into the sunset together. The last thing I want to do right now is ride off into the sunset and/or be swept off in some tidal wave of love. I am here, I am rooted and I am on solid ground. The last thing I want is some massive upheaval which plays out like a traumatic romantic comedy/action flick. I've had enough upheaval in the past year for six dramas, thank you. I like where I am standing and the path that I am on and the last thing I need is to be ducking into the bushes all the time for a quick makeout session. 

What I really want from my favorite admirer is to be friends.

What I really want is mutual admiration. 

And sex. 

If only I believed that were possible, or right, or just-that-simple to have sex with a friend and not have everything go haywire.

I am going running with my favorite admirer tomorrow morning. Maybe if I run fast enough I'll outrun my sex drive and be able to coast back into simple friendship. 

But, despite my annoyance at finding my admirer physically attractive, I am enjoying having a new friend and good company. 

I keep thinking that I need to address the issue of being single and (wanting to have) sex here on Singlutionary. But the truth is that I just haven't figured it out yet. Lisa over at Onely has addressed it quite eloquently and seems to be living proof that un-relationshiped sex can be a positive experience. 

I, personally, am still in a quandary. 

So while I won't be writing about sex, I will be writing about chickens, eggs, insects and the fact that most urban homestead types are seriously coupled and raising humans as well as livestock. 

Working Relationship

As my match.com experiment is coming to a close, I realize that I have learned quite a bit from dating. It wasn't anything I didn't already know but dating allowed me to put into practice my newfound standards, boundaries and ideals. I'm happy to say that I am no longer a desperate dater and I now have the experience and newfound confidence to prove it.

This freedom from desperate dating comes from knowing myself and enjoying my life. Its a lot harder to compromise myself into oblivion when I already love the life I am living. If a date doesn't call me I don't sit around thinking about all the things I might change about myself so that I would be more acceptable or attractive, I just shrug my shoulders and go look at the pumpkin vine in my backyard and marvel at how fast it is growing. I no longer expect first dates to lead to second dates which then lead to happily-ever-after. In fact, I don't expect some knight in shining armor to walk into my life, be perfectly compatible with me and sweep me off my feet. I'm just not worried about it.

Plus, its hard to sweep me off my feet without a struggle. I don't want to ride off into the sunset. I want to watch my garden grow and harvest the vegetables and carve jack-o-lanterns. I have roots and I have dreams and I'm not particularly keen on being carried off on a horse so that I can clean someone else's stables. 

I'm unwilling to give up the good things about myself in order to please or appease another person.

Lately, I'm having a parallel revelation in regards to my (nonexistent) acting career. I've spent so much time trying to be acceptable and marketable that I have totally forgotten who I am as an actor. I don't even enjoy acting. I don't even remember what good acting feels like. All I do is try and figure out what the agent, casting director, coach, client wants me to be. 

No wonder it isn't working out.

Just like any relationship-gone-wrong, I went into acting for love. I loved the way I felt when I was acting, I loved telling stories and I loved the way movies are made. I loved the collaboration and the project-centered work and I thought I had something to contribute. And I most likely did and I most certainly still do. 

But then came the advice. Relationships and acting are two things that everyone seems to unreservedly give advice on even if they suck at them themselves (look at me and all the relationship advice I give, for example)! Here is some of the advice I would constantly get as an actor: Why don't you change your image? Have nice nails, get a good haircut, look more asian, wear brighter colors, be skinny. Why don't you work on your audition technique? Don't blink too much, be confident, be relaxed, learn to speak with accents, learn to cheerlead, learn to ride a horse, learn martial arts. Why don't you: move there or move here or attend this function or that function or talk to this cousin of mine or that friend of my sister or why don't you hang out at this coffee shop? Why don't you take this class because the teacher is awesome and then you have to take that workshop because it will change your life and then you have to kiss this person's ass because it tastes like marshmallows. 

And in all this din, somewhere, was me. But I was fading by the second. No wonder I didn't feel confident and relaxed when I knew that inherently I had already screwed up by not having the right skills, the right personality, the right clothes, the right look. 

I don't know when it happened exactly, but over time this relationship stopped being about love and became about trying to be someone or something I am not so that I could be more attractive, more desirable, more bookable. And what for? What was I trying to attract? Did I really want to book that commercial with the cheesy script after all? How desperate was I for money/acceptance/success? How much money had I already spent on trying to improve my image or my resume? How much career success in other fields had passed me by while I was desperately trying to get ahead? How many days had I put off working on my car so I wouldn't have grease under my nails? How much of my own life had I sacrificed for this career and what was I getting out of it?

Nothing. 

So I'm breaking up with show business. One day I'd like to be friends with it but on my own terms; with dirt under my nails and wearing Birkenstocks (I don't really own any Birkenstocks but I couldn't find a better way to sum up my lack of desire to look like a proper Hollywood actress). Right now I just have to spend some time with myself and find an acting class which isn't about technique or auditioning and is just about acting for the sake of acting. Because good stories are still worth telling. And somewhere inside me there is still a good actor and I really need to find her. 

Awesomely enough, in the synchronicity of single blogs, Christina at Onely posted a humorous bit today about her romantic entanglements with her writing (aka Mr. Mike Rosoft Word).

Long Term Singlutionaries

I am new to dating. I never really dated before. I just jumped into bed and into love with strangers. When I was in college I tried the same tactics with making friends: I decided I wanted a person to be my new best friend and I would get their phone number and then invite them to EVERYTHING under the sun. My true best friend and roommate at the time tried to explain to me that things don't work that way with friends. She said that I needed to wait a while, talk to them after class and then find a way (after a period of time) to invite them to a relevant social activity.

I thought that was absurd. I mean, I'd already decided they were my new best friend. Or, in the case of men, I'd already decided they were my future husband. 

Ironically, one of the many things I find strange about dating now is the underlying assumption (which is mostly true in my age range) that we both seeking a long term relationship which ideally culminates in marriage.

In some ways I like asking, right at the get-go: "Is this person someone I would want around for the rest of my life" because most of the time the answer is a clear "no". Most of the time I can put a pretty clear prediction on how long a relationship with this person would last: One day, two weeks, four months, one year. I haven't met anyone yet who would last for even a year.

Here is what I realized this morning: I take the same approach when it comes to friends: I am at a point in my life where if I can't see our friendship being mutually enjoyable for more than a year, I'm not interested. 

Gosh. How rude. When it comes to friendship, it seems like we're supposed to open the floodgates to any and all applicants. But I invest a lot in all of my relationships and I don't have a ton of social time. I would rather being doing projects around the house and saving up my friendship energies for a "real" friendship than be out whoring around with one-night-friends.

This revelation has brought me so much relief!

1. Now I don't feel so awful about not pursuing a lot of female friendships. I have been worried for a long time now that I am secretly cultivating some very NON Singlutionary habits, one of which is devaluing friendship and perceiving friendship as merely a filler until I find my true romantic partner. I've also been thinking that I'm a closeted misogynist. Why is is that new female friendships either haven't kept my interest or have been downright annoying? Now I realize that I just haven't met the "right one(s)"! Finding new friends is like dating: If the friendship won't last more than a year, I'm just not interested.

2. Dating using this one year perspective is extraordinarily useful. In the past I would have gone on one date and then sat around for months trying to figure out how I could squish this stranger into my life and make him fit. That is crazy! Now I don't feel bad after the un-success of each and every dating encounter because I realize that what I am seeking is very specific. There is an exact shape--some sort of a polygon--and that is the shape of a person who would fit into my life (and I into theirs). So I'm like a child going through all these pegs trying to find the one that I can fit into the correct hole. Except now the shapes are far more complicated than circle, square, triangle. Instead they are these beautiful complex shapes. I look at the peg's shape (the date) and I appreciate it but it still doesn't fit into my uniquely shaped hole (make all the sex/penis/vagina jokes you want in the comments but I like this analogy)!

3. This whole peg/hole thing is a game. It doesn't have to be torturous full of rejection and all that. It doesn't even have to be played constantly. I can be out in the world and find some peg that might work and then forget about it for three weeks and then finally try it out. I don't need a peg to feel full or to fully function or to have joy and love and laugher in my life. The peg/hole game is kinda fun but there are other things I'd like to do too-- other learning endeavors. 

So that is my revelation for today. I am a long term Singlutionary and I like it this way!

Singlutionary Self (and my thoughts on dating)

I think I'm done with online dating. Online dating requires two qualities which I currently do not possess: 1) patience and 2) desperation.

I am not willing to sit around waiting for the right guy to become a member and to find me and to invite me on a wonderful date and to fall in love with me. I have way more important things to do. I have way more important things to think about. And I am sick of wasting my time sorting through pages and pages of "laid back" guys only to find an ambitious guy only to find out that he is either a) a bible thumper or b) a big breeder who wants a wife who will be adopted into his huge family and raise and birth his 30 children. I would rather sit on the toilet waiting for a big turd to come out than sit on the computer waiting for a man who ISN'T a big turd to ask me out. 

Online dating (or dating at all for that mater) is great for women who want a laid back bible thumper family oriented guy. Unfortunately, that is not me. I require my own special dating website for all the non-stoner, non-bible-thumping (yet spiritual/religious), non breeding, ambitious types.

So I lack patience. That much is obvious.

I also lack desperation (for the first time in my life) so the way I went about this process was very selective. I winked at guys but I didn't initiate emails. I quit emailing men if it looked like they would never ask me out or if they asked me out in a way that was flakey and not on a real date. I quit emailing guys if they failed to ask a question in the email. And I never responded to an email that struck me as icky in any way. Sometimes it was a matter of spelling and grammar. Sometimes it was a matter of subject or tone. 

In other words. I am picky. 

There is still this little voice coming from a closet in the back of my head which says "if you don't quit being so picky, you'll never be in a relationship" or "you need to be more open to the possibilities". These voices are tired because they have been shouting at me for 15 years. 

I have no desire to lower my standards to find my match. In fact, I would prefer that I continue to learn and grow as a person and that I hold myself to an increasingly higher standard. I believe that THIS (developing an excellent relationship with myself) will attract the right people (romantic and otherwise) into my life much faster than going out with a lousy speller/wishy-washy-dater.

I went online to research the kind of person I want to be in a relationship with. I didn't find him. But I did realize many things about myself and the kind of person I want in a relationship. I also realized that the man of my dreams is so unique that only some kind of crazy god would be able to find a way to bring us together. 

So I am giving up on online dating but I am also investing my time into building a better me. And I do so with the faith that everything I do in my life is leading me closer to my true self which is also, at the same time, bringing me closer to my true match and my truest friends. 

Practicing Singlutionary Dating

I started out on match.com a couple days ago so that I could look at available men and refine my idea of what I want. I realized that I've changed so much since becoming the Singlutionary that what I THOUGHT I wanted in a man (or in a friend or in any person central in my life) has changed too. I just don't know what the new vision is. 

But online dating has been so FUN that I am going to continue and even pay for it. My 20 bucks a month is money well spent if it can help me refine and define what kind of person I want to welcome into my world and how I go about interacting with potential dates. 

Unlike dating in the past, I don't feel that sense of dread or angst or need. I no longer feel like I am going to be so depressed if the hot Republican (yes, I said Republican) doesn't respond to my "wink". This is merely a process of getting to know myself better, to observe what kind of man I attract and what kind of man I am attracted to. And if I go on some dates and meet some cool guys or even fall in love in the process, well, heck. That is just the jalapeno on the taco!